Windows 7 Catch-All

Using Windows 7 for about 3 weeks now and so far, it's a remarkable visual step-up from Vista. I especially love the new system-tray (no more bazillion icons cluttering the taskbar!)

One thing I don't like is the change to the Volume Mixer - In Vista, once an app used the soundcard it would stick around in the mixer, so you could (for example) mute Firefox permanently. But now, the application only appears if some audio is playing and it disappears the moment you exit the app. Gotta say I prefer the Vista approach.

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

I would like to officially state I hate gadgets. Mainly because they're kind of cool, and I keep playing with different ones. Ooooh, a cat clock with moving eyes!

Yeah Gadgets are real hit & miss unfortunately. I have a few favorites - CPU Monitor, WiFi Network Monitor, Everest Ultimate's Gadget and Drive Activity.

Khoram wrote:

OK, here's a quick Win7 usability question I can't seem to figure out or find an answer to. Is there a way to give permanent permission for an app to run on an app-by-app basis without disabling UAC completely? I mean, I don't want to lose whatever amount of security UAC provides, but I also do not want to have to click "Yes" on a dialog box every single time I start WoW or some other game. Anyone know?

Have you tried telling Windows to run it as an administrator?

Right-click the program executable, go to properties, then click the compatibility tab. There's a checkbox all the way at the bottom that says "Run as administrator". It should stop bugging you about crap after that. I think.

Also, you can keep UAC on but switch off the "dimming" effect, which speeds the whole process a lot. A program tries to do something funky, you click the dialog box, end of story.

I reinstalled the full Enterprise version on my Macbook Pro and it's running even better than the beta. I've got the Zune software running, I'm digging Microsoft Security Essentials and the Live applications (even if the Photo Gallery and Movie Editor aren't in the same league as the Mac counterparts), and now that Mesh is up and running I've got my sync/backup solution running.

Man, that's a lot of Microsoft products I'm satisfied with. Two years ago, who'd have thunk it? I've always been a Microsoft Word junkie though.

If they'd only switch to open file formats, I'd be almost out of bad things to say about their software. Most of it related to price and unfair business practices.

Spent last night rolling back from Windows 7 to Vista. I don't blame Windows 7, I blame the lack of drivers/support yet from HP. My HDX18t (bad mamma jamma laptop) seemingly handled the upgrade well with few conflicts, but then all of the sudden when I loaded stuff up and started programs, the hard disk periodically spiked (every few minutes at the minimum) and everything froze from 1-3 seconds. Everyone knows 1-3 seconds of frozen is an ETERNITY if you're gaming.

Process monitor showed an INSANE...seriously, I'm not exaggerating, INSANE amount of registry/hard disk reads/writes even when the machine was IDLE. Doing nothing, zero, nada. Keys/files referenced were USB port scanning, Audio driver/codec wankery, Internet Explorer stuff, simply too much action behind the scenes. I tried updating and/or removing the suspects but to no avail.

Did a full system restore from the HP restore partition back to factory settings (Vista) and everything's right with the world again. Oh, and the performance difference is negligible when you have a machine of a certain caliber and get the UAC out of the way. To be honest, the only feature I'm going to miss all that much is the quick side-by-side window drag that you can do. I'll wait until HP gets off their arses and supports the new OS.

ScurvyDog wrote:

Process monitor showed an INSANE...seriously, I'm not exaggerating, INSANE amount of registry/hard disk reads/writes even when the machine was IDLE. Doing nothing, zero, nada. Keys/files referenced were USB port scanning, Audio driver/codec wankery, Internet Explorer stuff, simply too much action behind the scenes. I tried updating and/or removing the suspects but to no avail.

To be honest, unless you have deep (I'm talking geological, drilling for oil DEEP) knowledge of windows I'd say looking at PE isn't the way to find out what's wrong with windows, although it is a tool that is there to be used and get useful information out of. Windows nowadays is a very complex beast does a lot while idle, when it detects free capacity it will often go to work and optimise itself or finish deferred tasks. The registry and how it's used is also complex, it's not just a repository for settings, but practically every part of the system queries during normal operation. (I get amused when people think they know how to 'fix' all windows ailments and design problems by "Remove the registry OLOL" without breaking anything in the process)

That said, I would say that any OS from XP onwards is perfectly viable for running most things and tasks. The fact that HP hasn't got off their posterior and supported it yet isn't a good thing.

What exactly do you mean, HP isn't supporting it? They've got Win7 drivers listed on their website...

I've got an HP Pavilion dv3510nr and I put (and still am running) Win7 RTM on it back when that came out and what drivers it didn't download, the Vista versions that HP had on their website worked fine.

All of that notwithstanding, given the symptom you described, I'm more inclined to believe there's some specific program that was causing the problems, unless you already tried that?

Have you tried searching out the specific drivers piece by piece instead of relying on Windows Update or HP?

It can be frustrating, but the drivers included on the OS X install disc that installed via Bootcamp are terrible. Once I downloaded the newer Geforce drivers, Realtek audio drivers, and network drivers, I started getting battery life and performance comparable to when I boot into OS X.

Is there a way to turn off mouse acceleration in 7? All I've seen is a slider bar that goes from slow to fast. It's really wrecking havoc with my TF2 play.

Mouse>Pointer Options>Mouse>Enhance pointer precision, and uncheck that?

General Crespin wrote:

Mouse>Pointer Options>Mouse>Enhance pointer precision, and uncheck that?

Ya I've tried that, and while it helps, it doesn't seem to totally turn acceleration off. I've checked around on the internets and other people seem to still be complaining about it too.

Interesting. Found this post on slowing down acceleration, if it helps any...

I use a Logitech MX518, and the Logitech drivers seem to be able to turn off acceleration completely. I jack the precision WAY up and turn acceleration off.

ukickmydog wrote:

Is there a way to turn off mouse acceleration in 7? All I've seen is a slider bar that goes from slow to fast. It's really wrecking havoc with my TF2 play.

This is the .reg hack I've been using in 7. cheesemfix.reg

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showth...

I would suggest you back that registry key up before you change it in case you don't like it.

Gumbie wrote:
ukickmydog wrote:

Is there a way to turn off mouse acceleration in 7? All I've seen is a slider bar that goes from slow to fast. It's really wrecking havoc with my TF2 play.

This is the .reg hack I've been using in 7. cheesemfix.reg

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showth...

I would suggest you back that registry key up before you change it in case you don't like it.

Cool, thanks.

So it turns out my humble little HTPC running Windows 7 can play KOTOR with everything turned on high. Awesome. Wonder what else it can play.

Malor wrote:

I use a Logitech MX518, and the Logitech drivers seem to be able to turn off acceleration completely. I jack the precision WAY up and turn acceleration off.

I wonder if installing SetPoint (the Logitech drivers), even without a Logitech mouse, would still turn acceleration off? I completely forgot about that... it's been so long since I've played games on my desktop.

I don't think the Logitech drivers 'take over' for the Microsoft ones, except with actual Logitech hardware. You could try it, though... it wouldn't likely hurt.

I think I'll ask this here.

So, a couple months ago I bought a 4890 and then about a month ago I upgrade to Windows 7. I switched to Nvidia a few years back and haven't followed Ati drivers since then, so I'm curious about how often Ati updates their drivers. I got used to picking up the latest drivers, sometimes beta, most of the time WHQL, off of sites like Guru3d for my Nvidia cards and that seemed to happen every couple of weeks.

The latest non-beta driver for W7 and a 4890 is about 5-6 weeks ago. How often does Ati update their drivers because I feel like it's been longer than what Nvidia puts out. (I'm aware there's a beta out, but there doesn't appear to be any proper notes about the updates in the driver.)

Is it because W7 is relatively young, or is Ati a bit slower than Nvidia at putting out drivers? I just can't remember what Ati use to be like when I used their cards 4+ years ago.

I think ATI are on a rough monthly schedule, and occasional hotfix drivers to address something specific earlier than a full release. They use a 'year.month' format for version numbers so next month will be 10.2.

I personally find nvidia's releases to be sporadic in their release schedule (there isn't one I know of), and sometimes hit-and-miss if you're going to get a run of dodgy drivers. I haven't used an ATI card myself since my x800 so I don't know what ATI's quality has been like recently, although that will probably change the next time.

Not searching through the thread to see if Lifehacker's master list of Windows 7 keyboard shortcuts has been posted.

Apparently Lexmark is only supporting Windows 7 with their latest round of printers. My Lexmark 5150 all-in-one printer is only supported through Windows XP. We've upgraded all computers in the house to Windows 7. Any advice on getting this dern machine to work?

Thanks Eezy! I'll try these out when I get home. The responses on the thread link sound promising.

I found this thread on getting some Lexmark printers to work (ectract the .exe and run thet setup in Compatability mode for the OS it was meant for (Vista)). The printer does have two Vista drivers listed on the "Downloads" tab but I don't know the difference between the cjs and cjr versions. Also both versions say to use the built-in OS scanner utility since the downloads are just the stand-alone printer driver.

So the RC trial is almost up. Win7 keeps popping up a small window reminding me the OS will shut down every 2 hours starting March 1st. Needless to say, I'm looking for economic -but legal- ways of getting my hands on a copy of Windows 7 Professional.

Do I really need Win7 Pro? Maybe not and Home Premium is enough, but I still prefer Pro.

My Google-fu has lead me to find The Ultimate Steal; a special pricing by Microsoft for College Students: Windows 7 Pro for $65 dollars.

IMAGE(http://img203.imageshack.us/img203/8277/win7k.jpg)
Morale aside (I neither live in the US nor taking College Courses), I don't think there's a better price than that, so I'm reaching out to the Goodjer Collective; any University students still around?

PayPal would seem the fastest way to make the money transaction or if the system allows, I'll pay for it using a Samaritan's .edu email address.

Thanks in advance!

Well if you're looking for legal ways to get Win7, using someone else's student account o get Win7 isn't getting the job done.

Dr.Ghastly wrote:

Well if you're looking for legal ways to get Win7, using someone else's student account o get Win7 isn't getting the job done.

I, for one, am amused that the offer is called the Ultimate Steal. They're asking for it!

Hobbes2099 wrote:

Do I really need Win7 Pro? Maybe not and Home Premium is enough, but I still prefer Pro.

If you go the student route, the extra $5 for Pro is probably worth it just for the XP mode (oh, and the extra RAM you can utilize, though you probably won't ;). However, if you go the non-student route I don't think the cost difference btwn Home Premium and Pro is worth the $70 or so. I went with Home Premium. I had Vista and didn't feel like I needed an XP mode.

Hobbes2099 wrote:

Do I really need Win7 Pro? Maybe not and Home Premium is enough, but I still prefer Pro.

Do you need to be able to connect via Remote Desktop to this machine? Are you intending to use Windows' "Shadow Copy" to maintain revision history? Or are you planning to use BitLocker to encrypt files?

If you answered yes to any of the above, Pro makes sense. Otherwise, skip it and buy yourself a fancy latte.

Oh, more here.

I'm having a weird problem with some icons in my system tray (and the Launchy catalog). Inside of the usual app icon, I'm seeing the default "blank file" icon.

Googling around suggests that this is due to the Icon Cache getting corrupted. I've tried a couple of methods for fixing this, but so far no luck. Anyone else seen this problem or know of a way to fix it?

Running Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit.

Mine does that, sort of. I have a folder on my desktop called Utilities, which is a catchall for numerous stuff I use regularly. When I open the folder 90% of the icons show up immediately, but a handful of them stay blank, as you say. It takes a couple seconds, but then Windows seems to find them and turns them into their actual icons.

So, mine show up, eventually, but I don't know why that happens. Sorry.

Have you tried deleting the icon cache entirely? Or at least, everything inside of it? I remember sometimes my Windows XP desktop would slow down or have issues showing icons on occasion, and I would go to the cache folder and delete all the icons therein. Once the screen refreshed, Windows would reload all the desktop icons from their original sources basically rebuild the cache) and everything was smooth again. I don't see why something like that wouldn't work for W7, but maybe things are that much different now.